A Broken Pencil
by soccerstar20
Summary: In a lightly lit office, after the death of Tom Robinson, Mr. Underwood ponders why people in the town (including himself) are the way they are. Full of symbolism. POV


Disclaimer: I do not own To Kill a Mockingbird or any of its characters. It is sole property of Harper Lee.  
  
Author's notes: This takes place sometime after the trial and before the end of chapter 25, on the day Tom Robinson died. Mr. Underwood's point of view.   
  
  
  
A Broken Pencil  
  
  
Pacing around the office is not helping me concentrate anymore than it did five minutes ago. I sit down again and start tapping my pencil.   
  
Tap, tap, tap, snap.   
  
There goes another good pencil. It is garbage now. I throw away the broken pieces and watch them fly through the air in an arch and land it that metal can. I wait for the clink of wood against metal, but never hear it. Something about that disturbs me. I do not know why. I stare at the trash can. The thing that I am doing, it really is not helping, but I cannot stop thinking,   
  
'Hey, what did that pencil do to deserve this?'   
  
I swear, I must be going crazy.   
  
I rub my tired eyes and lean my head against my hand. It really is late, and I have made little progress. My mind starts to wander. Incidentally, it comes right back to the beginning.   
  
I am not one of those people who can stand up and say I am proud of who I am. Of course, most people are not. The few who can do that, they are the people too modest to do so-- people like Atticus Finch.   
  
I may not be proud, but today I am ashamed. An innocent person has been killed today, shot seventeen times. Seventeen times. Do you not think once would be enough? What did he do? Nothing, save try to save his life. He must have known. Known there was no way he could have won. The odds were all against him. Heck, the whole damn world was against him. It just is not right.   
  
I am not the best man out there, and I may be like them, but I swear this trail has done crazy things to me. It has made me think. No, it has done more than that. It has made me think,   
  
'Why don't I like those colored?'   
  
Do you know what, I really do not know why. I just do. That makes no sense. Still, I may not like them, but that does not mean they all deserve to die. I may not like them, but that does not mean they are not people, that they are soul-less. Sure, some of them lie and cheat, but then so do some of us. No, so do most of us. I cannot call myself a great Christian man-- the last time I went to church…Well, it was a long time ago-- but are we not all children of God? That is what I was always taught.   
  
Maybe I never stopped to reflect. What does make us so different from the colored folk? The only difference that pops up is the color of their skin. I sigh, and massage the temples on my forehead. I am not even sure what to think anymore. I do not even know if I dislike them or not anymore, but there are still things I do know. Some things never change.  
  
I have live in this town my whole life. I know these people. I am ashamed. What kind of town kills an innocent man? You know, killing a cripple is a sin; plain and simple. Tom's arm did not make him a cripple. Tom Robinson was a cripple as soon as he was born into this world-- as soon as he turned out black. It is a sin to hurt those weaker than yourself, too; plain and simple. Black just do not get along very well in this white world. They are crippled from the start, all of them.   
  
Although a gun shot rang out seventeen times-- seventeen times -- Tom's death passed quietly. Sure, it makes great gossip, but to the whites it is just another black man dead. No one cares. Live or dead, it is all the same. The would treat him like dirt and ignore him either way.   
  
I guess I am a sinner. When I was eight, I used to have a toy shot gun. I was mighty proud of it, until the day I killed a mocking bird. When I saw it fall to the ground, my eyes welled up. My father told me to be a man, and to tough it up, Son, my brother only laughed and called me a cry-baby, but it was my deceased mother's face that made my tears spill down my face. Her words from when she was alive rang through my ears,   
  
"Don't kill a mockingbird. For it is a sin to kill something that only brings joy into this world."  
  
I never killed another songbird in my life.   
  
Today, another mockingbird was killed, but this time I did not kill it, this time I am not the only one who cares. The others-- the ones who do not care-- they are cold-hearted. They are the ones who killed Tom. They are the sinners, not the black, not Atticus, and not me.   
  
My desk is a mess. It is littered with stacks upon stacks of paper. I clear a space and stand and stretch. There is a newspaper to write. I walk over to the trash can and peer at its contents. I see two pieces of wood with yellow paint on them clearly against the masses of crumpled white paper. Taking them out I already know what I am going to write. I sit back down at my desk. Scrimmaging through my drawers, I find tape. Carefully, I hold the wood together with the long stripe of sticky plastic. It would do for now. This pencil might be considered garbage to others, but it still had a job to do. It still had a use in this world.   
  
I had an article to write.   
  
  
A/N: To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, and although I did this for English, I wanted to post this to show my appreciation.   
  
I always like to write about obscure characters for my English Class, because it gives me a lot of freedom. Mr. Underwood is more complicated than he looks. I wanted to find out why he wrote that article after Tom Robinson's death. I guess I did.   
  
If you get to this part, it means you read this. Thanks a lot. Please review. I want to hear your thoughts. I hope you liked this. 


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